What's the big idea?

Richard Watson wrote about garage shop innovation.. He maintained that random mutations and adaptations are the seeds for innovation. Through natural selection, the best ideas spread to become the norm, i.e. innovation evolution (is that an oxymoron?). Radical ideas come not from large incumbents but small agile groups or individuals who don't fit the norm or think normally (i.e. they think out the box or perhaps don't know there is a box). An interesting piece of information he shares is that 25% of Silicon Valley startups are created by either Indian or Chinese entrepreneurs. He thinks it's because they think differently having coming from diverse cultural backgrounds, they challenge what we would think is good and normal.

What it does mean is the best innovators are those who are curious and refuse to believe rules are not bendable or can't be broken. Many of our ideas at TheGoodBlogs has been a result of discussions with our bloggers, supporters and advisors. To believe we, as individuals, are the sole heirs to some great idea is short sighted. Building your idea network is not. What is an idea network? Find people who will take a statement you make and ask 3 questions you wouldn't have thought to ask. Rather say something, ask someone. If you ask 10 more questions each day, you would have learnt 3650 more things each year...

Here are some of my questions today.

• So who is your idea network?
  
• If you could only read 3 blogs, what would they be?
  
• If you could only have 3 blog entries, what would you blog about?
  
• If there was one gadget you couldn't do without, what would it be?
  
• Who is the most influential blogger of this decade?
  
• What is the smartest idea you heard about this week?
  
• How would you turn your blog into a conversation?
  
• If there is only widget on your blog, what do you want it to do?
  
• When you're under stress, what's the first thing you do?
  
• Where do you go for your next big idea?
  

Feel free to comment and add your ideas here or click on the following tag and join the conversation by adding the tag to your blog entry.

big idea